


traveling

by Marcia Elena (marciaelena)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M, Post-Colonization (X-Files)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 01:52:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14415102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marciaelena/pseuds/Marcia%20Elena
Summary: Mulder remembers Alex. Sequel topassage





	traveling

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 14th Lyric Wheel, the 'Poetry Wheel', November 2003. 
> 
> Yet another post-col story from me. Sorry if you're tired of these--I think some part of me lives there. Thank you to Valoise for the amazing poem. 
> 
> For Maeson. For Logan. For Mulder and Alex--all of the Mulders and Alexes, in whatever worlds they might inhabit. May they all come together soon.

Dawn is only a faint promise in the sky by the time they finally reach shelter, the high canyon walls keeping them wrapped in shadows and hidden from enemy sight. The air outside is still cool at this hour, making the heat that greets them as they climb down into the small enclosed space of this bunker feel all the more stifling. The smell of so many bodies packed close together, unwashed and bristling with fear and exhaustion, is enough to make Mulder dizzy, and for a moment the impulse to turn around and brave the desert and all its dangers is strong in him. 

Bone tired, Mulder helps the others stack the supplies they're carrying into a pile before making his way to an unoccupied corner, sliding heavily to the ground. _Rest,_ he prays. Yet the very thought is nothing more than another momentary impulse, and carries no real expectation; struggling for survival on a constant basis has distilled everything into simpler shades. There is no middle ground anymore; it's either yes or no, Them or us. Alive, or dead. He'll rest, or he won't. 

More often than not these days, rest eludes him. More often than not, wishing for anything is foolish--hope is an illusory thing at best, and cruel at worst. They have all learned the utter futility of prayers. 

A flask is passed around, and Mulder takes a long draft of it before passing it on, wincing as the harsh liquid burns its way down his throat. The night's skirmish left a number of them dead and broken by the side of the road, and they all need the images to be dulled. There are long hours ahead to be spent here in the dark, away from the sun, keeping as silent as possible, and the lack of stimulus has a way of making each memory more vivid; but there isn't sufficient liquor to make them numb enough to forget, and they could not indulge even if there was. They need to stay alert, have their senses sharp when they walk out of here tonight to make the next leg of their journey towards Home. They're bringing back much needed food and medical supplies, and there might be more fighting ahead. They know They're looking for them. 

Mulder forces himself to partake in a quick meal with the others, for once glad that their rations are so meager. And then he closes his eyes, trying to relax. The only sounds around are those of breathing, of bodies shifting against the hard-packed earth in search of more comfortable positions. Once or twice he hears muffled sobs, but as his consciousness sinks into the cracks between wakefulness and sleep, even those are drowned out by the white noise of remembrance.

The ghosts of the dead rise to haunt him. They parade behind his eyelids, some accusing, most of them indifferent. He shies away from them all, strangers and loved ones alike, refusing to let them hold any power over him.

Their faces blur, their voices fade; limbs and mouths and eyes all coalesce into one, until it's _his_ countenance that Mulder sees, the color of his eyes the unattainable green that Mulder knows so well.

Alex. Inevitable that Mulder would think of him.

All of Mulder's roads have always led to him. For most of Alex's life, Mulder had denied him. In his death, he cannot. 

Mulder misses him. Alex's departure carved a hole in him; through it, Alex flows into him when the tide of grief is high, receding with the ebb, though never completely. The remembered rush of Alex's blood pulses in him, a latent presence, unceasing. 

Mulder wonders sometimes if death is the vast dark country he's always imagined it to be. If it is, he knows that where Alex stands waiting for him a light shines--having its bright source not on any star or lamp, but on Alex's very soul. Showing Mulder the way back to him. Alex's beacon is a fixed point in the darkness, constant, enduring. As he is the fixed point in Mulder's heart.

In the short time that they had together, there was so much they managed to do. In the long years before, there was so much they missed experiencing.

They never went skinny dipping. They never watched a baseball game. They never slept in a comfortable bed together.

But Alex held him in the night when his nightmares came; they held each other. Alex kissed him and whispered tender words in his ear, he fought by Mulder's side and watched his back, and he offered freely that which he never allowed anyone else to glimpse: himself. All of him, the truths and the lies and all the glorious nuances in between. Not even They could rob Alex of his complexity. He was beautiful until the end. 

It's not surprising then that Alex is the only one who can keep the memory of love alive in him. The piece of him that is Alex is the only thing that still gives him the strength to keep fighting. 

Through the haze of heat and half sleep Mulder senses movement near him, and he opens his eyes. Two of their band rise to their feet and, falling into each other's arms, start to sway together. It takes Mulder a minute to understand what they're doing.

_Dancing._

The sight is incongruous, disorienting. They're in a stinking hole in the ground, with no lights and no music and hardly enough air, the enemy on their heels--it's pathetic.

It's heartbreaking.

Mulder closes his eyes again, unable to stop the sting behind his eyelids from translating into moisture. Slick and hot as it rolls down his face. 

He lets it.

_We never danced, Alex._

*

Someone shakes him, pulling him back from that indistinct land of unrealized dreams. "Time to go." 

"Yeah," he rasps, dragging himself up, stretching painfully. He walks to the supplies pile and hefts his share of the load, climbing out of the shelter with the others, sighing in relief as the clean night air fills his lungs and strokes his skin. And for a second only, he allows himself to believe it's the touch of Alex's hand on his face, the breath of Alex's life sustaining his own.

He looks up at the starry sky; framed by the canyon walls, it reminds him of a river. All of them here standing on the wrong side, waiting for their turn to cross. 

But no. 

His soul is already halfway across the Styx; in the darkest hours of the day, he can hear Charon rowing, the coins of the dead whispering to the murky waters as they jingle in his pockets. 

Soon, he feels, he'll make landfall. Soon Alex will welcome him back into his arms, and in their combined melodies there will be such harmony that the shores of every world will resound with it.

Soon.

For now, he falls into pace with the others, aware that in this part of the voyage there is still a little distance left ahead to be traveled.

**Author's Note:**

> I WENT INTO THE MAVERICK BAR  
> by Gary Snyder 
> 
>  
> 
> I went into the Maverick Bar  
> In Farmington, New Mexico.  
> And drank double shots of bourbon  
> backed with beer.  
> My long hair was tucked up under a cap  
> I'd left the earring in the car. 
> 
> Two cowboys did horseplay  
> by the pool tables,  
> A waitress asked us  
> where are you from?  
> a country-and-western band began to play  
> "We don't smoke Marijuana in Muskokie"  
> And with the next song,  
> a couple began to dance. 
> 
> They held each other like in High School dances  
> in the fifties;  
> I recalled when I worked in the woods  
> and the bars of Madras, Oregon.  
> That short-haired joy and roughness-  
> America-your stupidity.  
> I could almost love you again. 
> 
> We left - onto the freeway shoulders-  
> under the tough old stars-  
> In the shadow of bluffs  
> I came back to myself,  
> to the real work, to  
> "What is to be done."


End file.
